A 37-year-old Huyton man pleaded guilty to stealing rare birds from the wild.

Leonard O'Connor, of St Anne's Road, could face six months in jail after being found with a live Goshawk in his home in February.

He pleaded guilty to taking two Goshawks chicks from a nest in Derbyshire, in 2000, and also to possessing parts of a Goshawks tail as well as producing false documents to try and get the Goshawks onto a legal register.

The court heard yesterday (Monday, December 16) O'Connor had taken the chicks and kept one of them as a pet and police had found a diary in his home detailing how he had reared the birds including notes on its first kill.

He was caught after trying to use false documents to put the Goshawk on the legal register but wildlife officers became suspicious of his story that the bird was disabled and he had taken it to look after and called officers from Merseyside Police Wildlife Division.

Huyton Magistrates Court adjourned Mr O'Connor's case while pre-sentence reports are drawn up and he will appear again before Magistrates on January 15 2003 to hear his sentence.

Under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1991 the maximum penalty for taking a Goshawk, a rare breeding bird with a population of only around 400 pairs in Britain, from the wild is a #5,000 fine or up to six months imprisonment.